I showed the rough mock ups to my sweetie and we had a good discussion about layouts, margins, the foibles if printer technology and the strange land of American sizing. We come from a land of the A1, A2, A3, A4 etc system and American sized paper seems so mysterious and arbitrary. I know printers in Australia use or cut down paper within the A system, all neatly stackable. I assume places like kinkos work of American letter, but what do printers who use more than glorified photocopiers use? Anyhow, this discussion got me thinking about different formats and sizes, which lead me to this mockup. It’s concertina shaped. No staples, less fiddly margins and allows me to add two extra comics!!!

I’ve created my first digital mockups for the mini-comic. I was dreading this part of the project. I don’t have a working version of inDesign and Adobe products are expensive. I screwed my courage to the sticking-place (after all I couldn’t waste all the time and effort people had put into voting I HAVE to create a mini-comic) and investigated the world of alternative software. I was prepared for something confusing and awful… GIMP may be fine and dandy on a linux machine, but on a mac it was a miserable experience. A quick trawl of the internet and wikipedia’s page on desktop publishing software led me to Scribus. I haven’t done anything super fancy with it, but thus far I’m really enjoying its simple elegance. I haven’t figured out how to create my own rulers, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out. Here are the first printed mockups, accidentally in color. Alas, the final version will be in black and white. I don’t have a duplexer, so I glued pages together. AFTER I printed and assembled a page worth of comics I realized that I’d inserted the wrong flowering head comic (aka beginner’s mind). Fortunately that’s an easier thing to fix. From here I just have to write the back page and endlessly fiddle with sizing and margins. Then it’s deciding how many to print, deciding if I want to pay a printer for two cuts or do all the cutting by hand and filling any idle hour with a stapler and a razor to slash open the pages.

Awww, Try is the most voted for comic. ^_^ First up, thank you to everyone who voted. It’s actually pretty scary (at least for me) to ask people to take actions for something that is just about me and my art (how much safer to hide behind a worthy cause or collaborative effort). It feels egotistical and gut tremblingly humbling. Thank you for sharing your thoughts about my work and taking valuable time out of your day. With 6 pages I have to pick ONE of the comics with 4 votes… unless I can find a way to bend and fold space-time. 85: Try, 9 votes 141: Lifestyle advice from a small pink bunny – batman, 8 votes 147: Good enough? 7 votes 83: Beginner’s Mind, 6 votes 29: Worries, 5 votes 6: Why, 4 votes 7: Belief, 4 votes 41: Small, 4 votes 100: Practice, 4 votes 115: Evidence, 4 votes All of the comics on the shortlist got at least one vote and that is a nice thing. 77: Missing You 3 87: After the Convention 3 14: Spoons 2 32: Bad 2 47: Thinking 2 103: Lifestyle Advice from a Small Pink Bunny, part 2 1 156: Geek girl geek boy 1

Dear Friends, In 31 short days I will be at the World Science Fiction Convention in San Antonio. Excitement!

I would like to create some mini-comics to exuberantly give to people. I have never made a mini-comic before and I would like your help deciding which six comics to include. I’ve developed a ‘shortlist’ but I’m not always the best judge of human taste, so you’re welcome to vote for ones I have not included. Each person can vote for up to eight comics and you are encouraged to go to the social medias and encourage people to vote for your favorite comics. The mini-comic will be printed in black and white.

• 6: Why
• 7: Belief
• 14: Spoons
• 29: Worries
• 32: Bad
• 41: Small
• 47: Thinking
• 77: Missing You
• 83: Beginner’s Mind
• 85: Try
• 87: After the Convention (assuming I can get the layout to work)
• 100: Practice
• 103: Lifestyle Advice from a Small Pink Bunny, part 2
• 115: Evidence
• 141: Lifestyle advice from a small pink bunny – batman
• 147: Good enough?

Every vote is important and so is doing me the great honor of talking about my comics and sharing links of ones you particularly like. With eight votes in your pocket you are welcome to place a few votes now and add more votes later… I always hate the idea of getting ‘it’ (oh mysterious it!) right instantly. Please spread the word, vote in the comments, share your views and spread the Things word through your social medias. It will be a touch embarrassing if the consensus leans towards a set of blank pages!

I’m participating in the Clarion Write-a-thon, as I do every year. It’s how this comic came into existence! Part of my project this year has been to actually… you know… let people who aren’t friends know about my comic! Donations to the write-a-thon this year will define my budget for promoting the Things for the year. AKA, your money still goes towards the worthy cause that is Clarion AND at the same time you give me permission to spend money out of my own pocket to let people know that the Things exist. Promotional work pre-writeathon:

• Giving the Things a domain of their own and building this website using WordPress and Comics Easel. More infrastructural than promotional, but you have to build it if you want them to come
• Printing business cards that have a cute comic on the front
• Created a profile on comicrocket
• Using twitter, facebook and tumblr (sometimes google+)

Some of the promotional work during the write-a-thon (I’m in the middle of the write-a-thon right now):

• Using the Comicrocket Genie tool to register my webcomic with Ink Outbreak, The Webcomic List, TopWebComics, The Belfry WebComics Index, Piperka – see new traffic from all these sources, ’cause, you know, I told them that I existed.
• Explore advertising with Project Wonderful. Play with different advertising banners, methodologies and campaigns… Project Wonderful sure can suck up a lot of time!!!!
• Thinking more about what makes a good advertising banner or button. I plan to advertise with Comic Rocket soon, but it’s a bigger financial commitment ($25 a shot, which is quite small in the world of advertising, but my budget is sponsor defined), so I want to draft a few more banners and see how I can improve on what I created for Project Wonderful. I really like the reach of Comic Rocket and I want to make a good first impression!
• Read a lot more comics!… ok maybe it’s not promotional directly, but I’m paying more attention to the big world out there and there are lots of interesting comics.
• Registered with Comic Basement – after I’d finished my registration they sent me an approval note that asked me to install a tracking code. I don’t remember that being in the registration info and I feel mildly resistant to installing it. I need to install it to be ranked, but I feel like the requirement was jumped on me without warning (it is there in the FAQ now that I’m poking around, but not on the registration page).
• Researched promotional material, so much to think about in this regard, what will work? Should I do bookmarks, postcards, even fancier merch? I have my glorious new iPad to get used to, which will allow me to draw things with enough pixels to look good at a larger size… I still have a lot more research to do in this area, suggestions always welcome.

All this activity has absolutely increased my comic’s visibility. It’s brought strange new eyes to my work and I’ve seen a steady increase in viewers. That said, none of this has been as powerful as word of mouth… and word of mouth relies on my work being awesome enough for you to want to mention it to people! So thank you to everyone who’s shared a link or mentioned me somewhere out in the world. You are the bees knees and make a world of difference. Every time I see a sudden surge in interest it’s because of something you have done. I shall work hard to be worthy of your support.

I love my amazing new iPad. I’m able to draw with so many more pixels, it’s very exciting. It’s exciting, but there may be a period of adjustment as I learn how to handle the higher level of sensitivity. I keep drawing the lines over and over again. It could be I need to explore new brushes in Procreate (my favorite drawing app). Anyhow, it feels a little bit like learning how to draw all over again, so apologies if things look a little wonky as I get my hand and eye in… Please feel free to tell me what you like and don’t like. I like learning with company 🙂

Also, ZOMG. comic 130! Comic 130!!!!!!! I promised I would make 130 comics by June 23 and I did it! For a bit I was drawing a comic every day and zooming ahead like a machine, then (just as a wise writer told me this was probably not a good long term strategy) my drawing fell over and I did close to nothing for two months. I hoisted myself back into the saddle and with more than a little fear in my eyes I’ve successfully put out one comic every two days. We have ARRIVED!… but I don’t think we’re there yet, I think we’ll keep going. I think there’s a mountain over there that looks interesting. I think there’s a cardboard box with something scary inside. I think I don’t know what the road ahead looks like, but I’d like you to share it with me and I hope we’ll make some cool discoveries together. If you have ideas about promotion, merchandise, cool things you’d like to see, please let me know. I’m participating in the Clarion Write-a-thon again this year and hopefully I will have a modest budget for merch and advertising next financial year.